USA

Since 9/11, military suicides dwarf the number of soldiers killed in combat

Courtney Kube
Mon, June 21, 2021

Since 9/11, four times as many U.S. service members and veterans have died by suicide than have been killed in combat, according to a new report.

The research, compiled by the Costs of War Project at Brown University, found an estimated 30,177 active duty personnel and veterans who have served in the military since 9/11 have died by suicide, compared with 7,057 killed in post 9/11 military operations. The figures include all service members, not just those who served in combat during that time.

The majority of the deaths are among veterans who account for an estimated 22,261 of the suicides during that period.

“The trend is deeply alarming,” the report says. “The increasing rates of suicide for both veterans and active duty personnel are outpacing those of the general population, marking a significant shift.”

The Department of Veterans Affairs releases information on deaths by suicide, but it does not distinguish by conflict. The report’s author, Thomas “Ben” Suitt III, took the VA data and estimated the total number of veteran suicides based on their ages and other factors.

A total of 5,116 active duty service members have died by suicide since Sept. 11, 2001, the report says. Figures for the National Guard and Reserves are not available for the first 10 years, but from 2011 to 2020 an estimated 1,193 National Guard and 1,607 Reservists have died by suicide.

In an interview, Suitt said the number 30,177 is likely well below the actual number of suicides for active duty and veterans. He believes one of the reasons the numbers continue to climb is indifference by the American public.

“For veterans to come home to an uncaring civilian population or to an uncaring public, that must be devastating,” Suitt said.

Other factors include the increase of improvised explosive devices causing more traumatic brain injuries, post-traumatic stress and other medical and emotional factors connected to suicidal ideation, Suitt said.

Suitt said his research found that some service members may not get the medical treatment they need, making them more vulnerable to suicidal behavior.

“There was a sense that an active service member would rather lie on a screening to be able to stay in the military,” he said.

“If they have a traumatic brain injury but no other physical injuries, they downplay the injuries to stay in their career.”

His research found that some service members felt they would lose their sense of identity by being discharged early for a medical issue and they “would do anything to avoid leaving the military.”

A Defense Department spokesperson said it takes a "comprehensive approach" to suicide prevention.

"Every death by suicide is a tragedy," the spokesperson said. "Over time, suicide deaths have increased in the broader U.S. general population. Our service members are not immune to trends that occur in society. Two of the most at-risk groups for suicide in the U.S. are males and younger individuals, and the military is heavily comprised of young males."

“Veteran suicide remains a challenging and heartbreaking issue that VA is fully committed to working in partnership with federal, tribal, state, and local government to find innovative ways to reduce suicides and deliver expedient care to those in need,” said VA press secretary Terrence Hayes.

Suitt expressed regret that some Americans don’t know that men and women are still serving in post 9/11 conflicts.

“The public needs to care. They really, really should,” he said.

If you or someone you know is in crisis, call the National Suicide Prevention Lifeline at 800-273-8255, text HOME to 741741 or visit SpeakingOfSuicide.com/resources for additional resources.

A demotivated dollar-store worker quit retail after an impressed customer told her to apply to a law firm. She got the job, and now earns $3-an-hour more, plus benefits.
Mary Hanbury
Mon, June 21, 2021

Disillusioned restaurant and store workers are looking for new opportunities. LM Otero/AP Photo


Retail workers across the US are abandoning low-paying jobs at stores and restaurants for new opportunities.


Christina Noles, 34, is among them. Noles left her job at a dollar store for a law firm, she told The Washington Post.


She learned about the law-firm job from a customer who was impressed by her work ethic, she said.

A dollar-store worker who was tired of working in retail quit her job to work at a law firm after being recommended by a customer, The Washington Post reported.


STILL NOT $15 PER HOUR

Christina Noles, 34, was earning $10.25-an-hour working closing shifts during the pandemic, and increasingly felt that a future in retail was "untenable," she told The Post. During one busy shift, a customer approached Noles and said they were impressed by her work ethic. The customer told Noles to apply for an opening at their law firm.

Noles applied, and was offered the job shortly after, per The Post. She is now pulling in $3-and-hour more than at the dollar store, plus benefits, as an intake specialist, she said.

"There's a part of me that feels like this must all be a dream," Noles told The Post. "There were a lot of things I liked about retail: I love talking to people and helping them, but the pandemic made me realize it was untenable."

Noles is one of many retail workers abandoning low-paying jobs at stores and restaurants to find new opportunities.

As Insider's Mary Meisenzahl reported, many workers say demanding customers and the stress of the work isn't worth their while.

Read more: Dissatisfied retail workers are leaving the industry because of abusive customers and low pay, and that's making the labor crunch worse

Businesses across the US are grappling with a national labor shortage, and are trying to attract workers back. Some US business owners have had to get more creative on who they hire, and are tapping teen workers to fill these spaces.

According to data from the Bureau of Labor Statistics, cited by The Wall Street Journal, teen unemployment rates in the US are at their lowest level since 1953, and the number of teens in work has reached the highest rate since 2008.

One Amazon warehouse destroys 130,000 items per week, including MacBooks, COVID-19 masks, and TVs, some of them new and unused, a report says

Isobel Asher Hamilton

Mon, June 21, 2021

A worker loading a truck with packages at an Amazon packaging center on November 28, 2019, in Brieselang, Germany. Sean Gallup/Getty Images

A probe into a UK Amazon warehouse found it marked millions of items for destruction each year.

One former Amazon employee said staff were given a weekly target of 130,000 items to destroy.

Amazon said the warehouse handled returns and destroyed items for the entire UK.

An Amazon warehouse in Scotland destroys millions of unsold products every year, an investigation from the British news outlet ITV found.

ITV filmed undercover footage inside Amazon's warehouse in Dunfermline, Scotland. The footage showed laptops, TVs, jewelry, headphones, books, and face masks being loaded into crates marked "destroy."

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An anonymous former Amazon employee told ITV that workers at the warehouse were given a weekly target of 130,000 items to destroy. This was corroborated by an internal memo viewed by ITV, which showed that during one week in April, 124,000 items were marked "destroy."

In the same week, 28,000 products were marked "donate."

"There's no rhyme or reason to what gets destroyed: Dyson fans, Hoovers, the occasional MacBook and iPad; the other day, 20,000 COVID (face) masks still in their wrappers," the ex-employee told ITV. About half of the items marked for destruction were still in their shrink-wrap, while the other half were returned items in good condition, they said.

An Amazon spokesperson told Insider that Dunfermline handles all products marked for destruction for the entire UK.

Read more: Amazon Prime employees say women get few promotions and there's a culture of aggressive male-dominated management

If 130,000 is a weekly average, that would translate to more than 6 million products marked for destruction every year. In 2019, undercover reporters in France found that Amazon destroyed over 3 million products in one year.

ITV filmed the boxes of products marked "destroy" being loaded into trucks and driven to recycling centers, as well as to a landfill site.





In a statement to Insider, the Amazon spokesperson said the landfill site mentioned by ITV was also a recycling center.

"We are working toward a goal of zero product disposal and our priority is to resell, donate to charitable organisations, or recycle any unsold products. No items are sent to landfill in the UK. As a last resort, we will send items to energy recovery, but we're working hard to drive the number of times this happens down to zero," the spokesperson said.

In 2019, the Mail on Sunday sent undercover reporters into a different UK warehouse where they witnessed unsold products being placed in a so-called "destruction zone." The Mail then tracked the products from that warehouse as they were loaded into trucks and taken to a waste-disposal site and a landfill.

Amazon's spokesperson did not comment on whether the company had changed its infrastructure since the Mail's 2019 investigation.

Do you work at Amazon and process goods marked for destroy? Contact this reporter at ihamilton@insider.com or iahamilton@protonmail.com.

Read the original article on Business Insider

US Employees say their companies aren't sticking to the promises they made on racial justice

Mela Seyoum, USA TODAY
Mon, June 21, 2021

As Juneteenth approaches, employees are reflecting on the commitments to racial justice made by their employers and finding them lacking.

A new survey from Benevity reveals that while nearly half of employees can remember their companies making commitments about racial justice after the murder of George Floyd, only 26% believe those commitments were fulfilled, compared with 61% of employees who can't say whether their companies fulfilled their commitments.

"I believe it is essential that businesses make meaningful investments in building diverse, inclusive workplace cultures," Lisa Lewin, CEO of General Assembly, told USA TODAY in an email. "At a minimum, when it comes to topics like racial justice or climate change, companies must 'do no harm.' "

The survey was conducted from May 24 to June 6 and spanned 1,000 U.S. employees from fortune 500 and midlevel companies.

Over 70% of employees agreed that it’s important to have difficult conversations in the workplace about racial and social justice. More than half (69%) also said they would recommend their companies to others if addressing those issues is prioritized. More than a third of employees said they would quit if their workplace doesn’t do so.

What to know about Juneteenth: Juneteenth 2021 celebrations: What to know about the holiday

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"True social progress is not possible without the business community taking meaningful action to address the most intractable problems facing our world," Lewin said.
What companies are doing

Employees also noticed the lack of action taken by leadership, with 55% of those surveyed saying leadership addressed racial justice and equity in written or oral statements but nothing more.

Almost half (47%) said they felt that company leadership displayed the same or less amount of racial sensitivity in the past year.

In the wake of Derek Chauvin’s guilty verdict in Floyd's murder, companies like Facebook, General Motors, Starbucks and Microsoft made public statements offering condolences and affirming their stance against racism.

Protest march after a Juneteenth rally at the Brooklyn Museum in New York on June 19, 2020.

But some, like the Las Vegas Raiders, faced backlash over social media posts or inaction.

The corporate world has long struggled with a lack of diversity in its ranks, and a report compiled by the Alliance for Board Diversity and the consultancy Deloitte recently showed that while the boards of Fortune 500 companies are improving in their diversity, that progress is still slow. These companies often tap the same pool of candidates, and of their newly appointed officials, white women greatly outnumbered people of color.

The report did show some progress, with 29 Fortune 500 companies having 60% of their boards made up of women or people of color.
Working from home

While the pandemic forced most employees into remote work, 49% of those now working from home said they would prefer to continue working that way because of the lack of inclusivity in their workplace.

Other employees, especially parents, have also expressed wishes to continue working from home and additional services to help ease struggles with child care, according to the Bright Horizons Modern Family Index. More than 9 in 10 working parents said they worried about what they were dealing with mentally, and women and people of color didn’t feel as supported by their employers as white parents.

The Benevity survey also noted that employees have a continued interest in their companies addressing these issues and others like gender inequity, LGBTQ and poverty.

Contributing: Charisse Jones, USA TODAY

This article originally appeared on USA TODAY: Juneteenth: Survey on racial justice shows companies lacking

Joni Mitchell - Hejira (1976) Full Album

FIVE YEARS AFTER BLUE, JONI RELEASED THIS STUNNING ALBUM

MY FAVORITE

1. 0:00 - Coyote

 2. 05:01 - Amelia 

3. 11:02 - Furry Sings The Blues 

4. 16:09 - A Strange Boy

 5. 20:28 - Hejira 

6. 27:09 - Song For Sharon 

7. 35:47 - Black Crow

 8. 40:10 - Blue Motel Room

 9. 45:14 - Refuge Of The Roads

Review: The Joni Mitchell-James Taylor saga makes for a potent novel that stands on its own

Chris Vognar
Tue, June 22, 2021

It’s a tricky business, basing a novel on a real-life relationship between two people. Obsessives will demand facts rather than fiction. Hew too closely to the record, however, and you choke off the imagination.

Emma Brodie toes this line with zest and balance in her debut novel, “Songs in Ursa Major.” The book is very much based on the love affair and mutual muse-hood of Joni Mitchell and James Taylor, leading lights of the folk-rock world and onetime residents of L.A.’s Edenic Laurel Canyon. But from the very start, it stretches out and becomes its own thing. Brodie works with big themes — individuation, mental illness, legacy, self-destruction and redemption — but her touch is lighter than an onshore breeze. Little surprise that Village Roadshow has scooped the novel up for development as a movie.

Jane Quinn lives on a sleepy Northeastern island, “a stone’s throw off the coast of Massachusetts,” with her extended family. It’s 1969 and she leads a band, the Breakers, that performs in relative anonymity. That changes fast when budding superstar Jesse Reid wrecks his motorcycle en route to the Island Folk Fest. In a jam, festival organizers pluck the Breakers from the amateur stage down the hill. An A&R guy catches the set. And, as in the movies, a star is born.


“What a range,” thinks (fictional) Rolling Stone reporter Curtis Wilks as he watches the show. “A soprano, in the school of Joan Baez and Judy Collins, though not nearly as patrician-sounding as Collins, or as embattled as Baez. There was an untrained edge in her voice, an almost Appalachian coarseness, that raised the hair on Curtis’s neck. Just gorgeous.”

Brodie, formerly an editor at Little, Brown, has a wicked knack for locating the tone of various music types: journalists, producers, A&R scouts and, of course, prodigiously talented singer-songwriters. Except Jane, as they say, is different. Bold but vulnerable, whip-smart and earthy, she’s easy to root for from the moment she takes the stage at that first big show.

Excited to get a shot, she’s also wary of what the music industry might do to her. Jane is especially hesitant as she’s drawn into the orbit of Jesse, who is recovering from the motorcycle crash on the island. Jane wants success on her terms, and as she falls hard for Jesse, she also wants to keep some emotional distance from a man who always seems just out of reach.

You can tell when a novelist truly loves her heroes and despises her villains. As Jane fights to get her due in a man’s, man’s, man’s world, navigating the experiences that eventually inform her equivalent of Mitchell’s breakthrough album, “Blue” (whose 50th anniversary falls on the day of this book’s release), you can feel Brodie pulling to lift her above the crowd.

But “Ursa Major” is plotted so tightly, its characters so vividly rendered, that you barely notice the author’s thumb on the scale. Jane, with all her insecurities and appetites, is no more perfect than any other character here; one extended sequence finds her seducing a photographer and throwing him away. Yet Brodie lets you know that in her essence, she is special. As that Rolling Stone scribe puts it, “Her loveliness felt personal — it was impossible to look at her and not take flight in some small part of you.”

Of course, every hero needs a villain. Brodie’s is Vincent Ray, an allegedly visionary producer who can’t stomach the idea of a female artist having her own ideas. He lays as many traps for Jane as he can, always looking for a way to derail her career. You feel a cold blast every time he enters a scene and asserts himself with alpha male mind games. His presence makes you cheer for Jane even harder.

As the Breakers hit the road for a cross-country bus tour with Jesse and his band, Jane’s character arc and irony-rich dilemma come into sharp focus. Her A&R rep, Willie, wants her to play the fame game and tantalize the press with are-they-or-aren’t-they clues about her and Jesse. He wants her to sell albums. He also wants her to play security blanket for the established star.

Jesse is a heroin addict, as Taylor was — a secret he’s grown adept at keeping. It seems that to advance her career, Jane must suppress her art and her soul. Brodie never has to come out and explain this dynamic, because she so deftly dramatizes it.

“Songs in Ursa Major” also weaves in a deep understanding of the connection between creativity and madness. Jesse was (also like Taylor) a patient at the McLean Hospital in Belmont, Mass.; he wrote a song, “Sylvie Smiles,” about fellow patient Sylvia Plath (“She’ll be Venus if you’ll be Mars/Catch her in a glass bell jar”). More pertinent to the story, Jane’s mother, Charlotte, suffered a psychotic break years ago; a fellow songwriter, she was broken partly by another musician who stole her best song. This sounds like a minefield of clichés; in Brodie’s hands, it’s a rich crop of lived-in details that link one character to another over multiple generations.

Taylor and Mitchell in a recording studio in Los Angeles in 1971. (Jim McCrary/Redferns)

There’s something about “Ursa Major” that suggests a mythology, a hero’s journey in which the hero is a woman with immense musical gifts and the music business is a beast to overcome and master. Jane isn’t just a rising rock star; she’s also a sort of superhero, and this is her origin story. If anything, that story ends too quickly. By the time it jumps ahead in time for an epilogue of sorts, it feels like there’s still unfinished business — between Jane and Jesse, between Jane and her art, between Jane and the world.

If you want to play a game of “Where’s Joni” with the novel, you can always pick up David Yaffe’s 2017 biography, “Reckless Daughter: A Portrait of Joni Mitchell.” But “Songs in Ursa Major” deserves to be enjoyed as is, without connecting the dots. Fiction, after all, is fiction. Brodie is very good at it, and — like Joni and like Jane — a voice well worth listening to.

Vognar is a freelance writer based in Houston.

Rolling Stone
Joni Mitchell Talks ‘Blue’ With Cameron Crowe in Rare New Interview
Singer-songwriter discusses recording her 1971 masterpiece, the album's legacy and the state of her singing voice

Quincy Jones Hosts As The Jazz Foundation Honors Joni Mitchell And Wayne Shorter In Los Angeles - Credit: WireImage

Daniel Kreps
Sun, June 20, 2021


Ahead of the 50th anniversary of Blue, Joni Mitchell discussed her 1971 masterpiece, the album’s enduring legacy and the state of her singing voice in a rare new interview conducted by Cameron Crowe for the Los Angeles Times.

“Like all of my albums, Blue came out of the chute with a whimper. It didn’t really take off until later. Now there’s a lot of fuss being made over it, but there wasn’t initially,” Mitchell told Crowe.

More from Rolling Stone

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“The most feedback that I got was that I had gone too far and was exposing too much of myself. I couldn’t tell what I had created, really. The initial response I got was critical, mostly from the male singer-songwriters. It was kind of like Dylan going electric. They were afraid. Is this contagious?”

Prior to the interview, Crowe opens with an anecdote about one of “Joni’s Jams,” private, all-star jam sessions that occur occasionally at Mitchell’s Los Angeles home. At a recent gathering, Mitchell — who hasn’t perform publicly since 2013, two years before she suffered a brain aneurysm that impacted her ability to speak and walk — sang Blue’s “All I Want” alongside Brandi Carlile, one of that jam session’s guests.

“It was a fun evening,” Mitchell told Crowe. “I wasn’t sure I would be able to sing. I have no soprano left, just a low alto. The spirit moved me. I forgave myself for my lack of talent.”

Elsewhere in the Los Angeles Times interview, Mitchell talked about the “real” Laurel Canyon — as opposed to the community depicted in recent documentaries — as well as recording Blue, the real-life inspiration behind the album’s “Carey,” and her breakup with Graham Nash that inspired much of the LP.

“I thought with Graham and I, our relationship was very strong. I thought that it was the last one I’d have,” Mitchell told Crowe. “And so I disappointed myself when that wasn’t so, and that’s why I was so sad at that time.”

In May, Mitchell made a rare appearance at Clive Davis’ virtual Grammy party to talk about her early career, songwriting, and her legacy.

To celebrate the 50th anniversary of Blue this week, Mitchell will release her The Reprise Albums (1968-1971), the next installment of her Archives series, with this set focusing on Blue, Song to a Seagull, Clouds, and Ladies of the Canyon. The liner notes for the latest collection were penned by Carlile, while Crowe wrote the notes for the Archives series’ first volume.

LA Times
Joni Mitchell asked this L.A. drummer for help on 'Blue.' The rest is music history
L.A. session drummer extraordinaire Russ Kunkel on working with his friend "Joan" and what people don't realize about her musical chops.


The Independent
Joni Mitchell’s Blue: What critics have said about one of the greatest albums of all time
‘She mixed shades of sadness and wisdom into a palette of nerves and melody that does not feel unreasonable to call sacred’


LA Times
In 1971, nothing sounded like Joni Mitchell's 'Blue.' 50 years later, it's still a miracle
On "Blue"'s "All I Want," Joni Mitchell asked "Looking for something, what can it be?" The answer was Joni Mitchell.

52% of Americans want all student-loan borrowers to have their debt forgiven, new survey finds

Ayelet Sheffey
Mon, June 21, 2021

Protestors wearing signs with the amount of student debt they owe. Reuters/Andrew Burton


A GoBankingRates survey found 52% of Americans support blanket student loan forgiveness.


It also found 20% of respondents think the government should stay out of debt cancellation.


Democrats are keeping the pressure on Biden to cancel $50,000 in student debt per person.


Democratic lawmakers are keeping the pressure on President Joe Biden to cancel $50,000 in student debt per borrower. While he has not yet done so, there's evidence that a large number of Americans - maybe even a majority - support an even bigger debt wipeout.

A survey released last week from GoBankingRates - a personal finance portal - found that of the 3,600 Americans surveyed, 52% supported blanket student-loan forgiveness, meaning loan forgiveness for everyone with student-loan debt. Meanwhile, 12% of respondents supported loan forgiveness for those with low income and high debt, 11% supported forgiveness for those in public service, and 4% supported temporary loan forgiveness through the pandemic.

The survey collected responses from April 16 to May 18 and asked respondents which approach to student loan forgiveness they think the US should adopt.


The survey's findings align with a study by The Harris Poll in January that found 55% of Americans supported forgiveness of all student debt.

Responses in the GoBankingRates survey from older Americans are "particularly interesting," as the survey noted, given that student-loan forgiveness would significantly benefit older Americans. According to an estimate from the American Association of Retired Persons (AARP) released in March, 8.4 million borrowers ages 50 and older hold 22%, or $336.1 billion, of the total federal debt load, with what could be as much as 10% interest charged annually adding to the growing pile.

Insider reported last month that many older Americans fear they will die with their student debt.

"I feel like I've actually been responsible, and I've paid a considerable amount of money on my student loans," David Wise, 59, told Insider. "But it really is a debtor's prison."

Student loan payments have been on pause for the duration of the pandemic, and while they are set to resume in October, Education Secretary Miguel Cardona has hinted at the possibility of extending the pause even further.

And during the pause, Massachusetts Sen. Elizabeth Warren and Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer have been calling on Biden to cancel $50,000 in student debt per borrower to provide immediate aid once the pause lifts, and a recent study from the left-leaning Roosevelt Institute found the lawmakers' plan would help low-income borrowers the most.

Biden has yet to comment on whether he will act on the blanket student-loan forgiveness. He so far has cancelled student debt for some borrowers with disabilities and defrauded borrowers, and he has asked the Education and Justice Departments to review his ability to use executive action to cancel $50,000 in student debt.

According to Schumer, Biden wants Democrats to keep the pressure on to forgive student debt.

"We said, 'We're going to keep at it until you do this,' and to his [Biden's] credit, he said, 'Go ahead.' He's talked about 10 thousand - that's not enough," Schumer said during a student debt forgiveness town hall. "We're keeping the pressure on him."

[Editor's note: This article has been updated to clarify that the GoBankingRates survey was not a poll, as the initial headline indicated, and to relate the findings to a Harris Poll study in January.]

Biden's housing secretary calls student-loan debt a barrier to Black homeownership

Ayelet Sheffey
Mon, June 21, 2021

HUD Secretary Marcia Fudge told Axios student debt is limiting Black homeownership.


She said it's partly down to failures to enforce the Fair Housing Act, which prohibits housing discrimination.


Black homeownership has been on the decline and Black people pay more for housing than white people.

Black Americans hold a disproportionate burden of the $1.7 trillion student debt crisis, and it's limiting their abilities to own a home.

Department of Housing and Urban Development (HUD) Secretary Marcia Fudge told Axios in a Sunday interview that student debt is hindering homeownership for Black people. On Friday, the Federal Housing Administration (FHA) announced in a press release it is updating its student loan monthly payment calculations in an effort to "remove barriers and provide more access to affordable single family FHA-insured mortgage financing for creditworthy individuals with student loan debt, which has a disproportionate impact on people of color."

Fudge said the disproportionately low rate of Black homeownership had driven HUD to reassess student loan calculation policies when determining homeowner assistance, which will increase homeownership access for communities of color.

"Who has student debt? Poor people, Black people, brown people," Fudge told Axios. "We're the people who carry most debt. And so the system's already skewed toward us not being creditworthy."

Fudge said part of the problem comes down to failures in enforcing the Fair Housing Act. The Act, which passed in 1968, says discrimination against people "because of race, color, national origin, religion, sex, familial status, and disability" when dealing with housing-related activities is illegal.

And yet, Black Americans are still falling significantly behind white Americans when it comes to homeownership. For example, the Indianapolis Star reported that the value of a Black woman's home shot up by $149,000 when a white friend stood in for her, and Insider reported last year that Black families pay over $60,000 more in homeownership costs than white families.

The student debt crisis isn't helping this problem. Thirty-six civil rights organizations, including the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People (NAACP), released civil rights principles for student debt cancellation that "will help Black and brown borrowers build wealth and enable our economy to move forward as millions of Americans are able to start families, buy homes, and set up small businesses."

They noted that upon graduation, Black borrowers typically owe 50% more than white borrowers, and after four years, Black borrowers owe 100% more. And while President Joe Biden outlined plans on the 100th anniversary of the Tulsa Race Massacre to end racial discrimination in the housing market, he failed to address student debt cancellation. Derrick Johnson, NAACP president, said Biden's plans missed the mark.

"Student loan debt continues to suppress the economic prosperity of Black Americans across the nation," Johnson said in a statement. "You cannot begin to address the racial wealth gap without addressing the student loan debt crisis. You just can't address one without the other. Plain and simple."

"For people of color, especially Black people, homeownership is wealth," Fudge said. "It's not only wealth to us, but it's generational wealth."

Read the original article on Business Insider

Women starved themselves to reach Victoria's Secret 'virtually inhuman' standard of beauty; now the iconic Angels are gone


JUNE 17th 2021: Victoria's Secret officially abandons the Victoria's Secret Angels and the Angel Wings as part of a major re-branding campaign. - File Photo by: zz/DP/AAD/STAR MAX/IPx 2016 11/30/16 Alessandra Ambrosio on the runway during the 2016 Victoria's Secret Fashion Show held on November 30, 2016 at The Grand Palais in Paris, France

Caroline Kitchener
Sun, June 20, 2021

Shiny hair. Big breasts. Flat stomachs. Protruding collarbones. Long, tanned legs.

Jazmine Moreno would examine their bodies on her lunch break at work, watching them catwalk across the stage in thongs and bras made of Swarovski crystals. At age 17, in Moore, Okla., she tortured herself with one question: "Why can't I look like a Victoria's Secret Angel?"

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Moreno, now 26, did everything she could to make her body more like theirs. She looked up their diets online. She ate three nuts when she wanted a handful. She worked out every day, sometimes twice. But no matter what she tried, she said, she was still too muscular. Too curvy. The little pouch at the bottom of her stomach - the thing she hated most about her body - wouldn't go away.

"You imagine yourself looking like that. You're sparkling, you're glowing, you're everything. That was the fantasy in my head."

Victoria's Secret announced a major rebranding effort Wednesday that included an end to the "Angels," the store's signature group of models, known for taking the catwalk in lingerie, jewels and feathered wings. The platform that launched supermodels like Heidi Klum and Tyra Banks will be replaced with a more diverse set of models who have built successful careers that extend outside of the industry, including soccer star Megan Rapinoe, actress Priyanka Chopra Jonas and LGBTQ model and activist Valentina Sampaio.

The Angels are no longer "culturally relevant," Victoria's Secret chief executive Martin Waters told the New York Times.

Since the late 1990s, the Victoria's Secret Angels have been a cultural icon, idolized by people around the world. They promoted a standard of beauty that was "virtually inhuman," said Renee Engeln, a professor of psychology at Northwestern University. In her classes on the psychology of beauty, Engeln uses the Angels as the "classic example" of the narrow range of body types often put forward in the media, causing women, and especially young women, to feel like they'll never be enough.

"Victoria's Secret has always had this hold over young women," said Erin Dyer, 23, based in Doonbeg, Ireland. "You look at these tanned bronzed women and you think, 'I should have this as a goal, then I'll feel like these women look.'"

Of course, Dyer said, it was a goal you'd never reach.

When Jennifer Osting was 14, she and her friends would gather around the television in Louisville to watch the famous Victoria's Secret fashion show. "These women are perfect," Osting would think to herself. At her all-girls school, many of her friends tried the "Victoria's Secret Model Diet." She would see them at lunch, eating celery and peanut butter, she said. They could only eat 1,200 calories a day.

Osting, now 21, didn't think she was like those girls, she said. She was comfortable with her body. Whenever her school served loaded tater tots for lunch, she helped herself to a heaping portion.

But then she noticed how many compliments the Model Diet girls seemed to be collecting.

And she'd think to herself: "Maybe I should do that, too."

Through the Angels, Victoria's Secret linked their brand to sex appeal, Engeln said. The message was clear, she said: Men want women who look like this. If you didn't look like an Angel, Engeln added, you might come away thinking you weren't desirable.

As a teenager, Moreno said, she liked Victoria's Secret because it was "kind of scandalous." If she wore this kind of lingerie and tried to embody the Angel aesthetic, she said, she thought boys would like her.

Eventually, she said, she started to get skeptical.

"It took me a while to realize: Why do I want to be this fantasy for guys and not be this fantasy for myself?"

Over the last few years, more and more people have been speaking out against the unrealistic beauty norms perpetuated by brands like Victoria's Secret, Engeln said. Several of the company's competitors, like Fenty by Rihanna, have embraced a more inclusive concept of beauty.

"Victoria's Secret isn't doing this because they care about women," Engeln said about the shift to inclusivity. "They're doing this because the old way wasn't making them as much money."

In making this decision, the company listened to its consumers, chief marketing officer Martha Pease wrote in a statement to The Washington Post. "Women have told us what they want. We know what they want from us in their lives. They want us to acknowledge and embrace diversity."

Osting imagines there are a lot of women like her, in their 20s and 30s, who grew up with Victoria's Secret - but are now starting to question the company's definition of beauty.

Dyer, who wears plus sizes, has tailored her social media feeds to leave out pictures of stick-thin models. When those kinds of models pop up on her social media, she'll scroll right past them or click "not interested." After a while, she said, the algorithm picked up on what she didn't want to see.

Dyer is deeply skeptical of Victoria's Secret's rebranding decision. She doesn't believe their new, inclusive message, she said. While Victoria's Secret executives may say they want to promote all body types, she said, "I think they will always value socially accepted beautiful people more."

Still, she said, she was happy to see the change. For many women, she said, Victoria's Secret is still the "poster child for femininity." If they change everything about their brand, she added, other companies will follow.

After she learned about the rebranding with Rapinoe and others, Moreno thought about her 17-year-old self.

"These are real people, chosen based on what they've accomplished." If she had seen the new model lineup when she was 17, she said, "it would have saved me so much trouble and heartache."

Even with all the changes, Moreno isn't quite sure how she feels about the store.

She would maybe take her future daughter there one day, she said - but "only if she asked."

- - -

This story first appeared in The Washington Post's The Lily publication.

Tyra Banks reacts to Victoria’s Secret phasing out Angels

DANIELLE LONG
Mon, June 21, 2021,

Tyra Banks is weighing in on Victoria's Secret's latest change.

Last week, the lingerie company announced it would be getting rid of the iconic VS Angels and launching the "VS Collective," a new partnership platform to help "shape the future of Victoria’s Secret."

Founding members of this new initiative include actress Priyanka Chopra Jonas, soccer star Megan Rapinoe, mental wellness supporter Adut Akech, equality activist Amanda de Cadenet, skier and youth and women's sports advocate Eileen Gu, body advocate Paloma Elsesser and LGBTQ activist and model Valentina Sampaio.

Taking to Instagram to share her thoughts on Victoria's Secret's latest rebrand effort, Banks shared a photo of herself from her last walk at the iconic VS Fashion Show in 2005, writing, "First is hard. First is lonely. But first is necessary."

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"First is crucial so that a door can be opened for others to fit through," she continued before reflecting on her past with the company. "Within a 10 year span starting in 1995, I was the first Black @VictoriasSecret contract model ever. The first Black Victoria's Secret Cover model. The first Black VS model to do so many other groundbreaking things with the brand - as well as other brands."

"But after a first, must come a flow of more. A flow of different. A flow of unique. A flow so strong, a flow of so many that we LOSE COUNT," she went on. "I retired from the runway 16 years ago - and I'm proud that in my lifetime, I’m witnessing a beauty revolution. To the new collective of bada** ROLE models, I may have cracked that door open, but y’all are charging through."

MORE: Victoria's Secret rebrands featuring diverse, inclusive message for new generation

"Keep on keepin' on until we all LOSE COUNT of how many are breaking through behind you," she concluded, adding the yellow heart and strong arm emojis and #LetsLoseCount.

Tyra Banks reacts to Victoria’s Secret phasing out Angels originally appeared on goodmorningamerica.com

Thousands sign petitions to keep Bezos in space

Harold Maass, Contributing editor
Mon, June 21, 2021


Jeff Bezos. Mark Wilson/Getty Images

Tens of thousands of people have signed petitions calling for barring Amazon CEO Jeff Bezos from returning to Earth after his planned flight into space on July 20, NPR reports. Bezos announced earlier this month that he and his brother, Mark Bezos, would be on board when the New Shepard suborbital rocket system built by his space exploration company, Blue Origin, makes its first flight carrying people.

There are several petitions targeting Bezos. The leading one, "Do not allow Jeff Bezos to return to Earth," had 42,000 signatures as of early Monday. "Billionaires should not exist," the petition says. "On Earth, or in space, but should they decide the latter they should stay there." Bezos said in an Instagram post that seeing Earth from space "changes your relationship with this planet, with humanity."

JUSTIFIABLE HOMOCIDE

French woman goes on trial for killing stepfather who repeatedly raped her

By Monday afternoon around 588,000 people had signed a petition demanding that Ms Bacot, who risks life in prison for murder, be cleared of the charge.

Mon, June 21, 2021

Valerie Bacot arrives in court flanked by her family and surrounded by journalists - JEFF PACHOUD/AFP via Getty Images

A French woman went on trial on Monday for killing the man who raped her for years as her stepfather before becoming her husband and pimp.

The story of Valerie Bacot has moved campaigners against domestic violence, with hundreds of thousands of people signing a petition for her release.

“I had to put an end to it,” Ms Bacot, 40, wrote in a book published last month called “Everybody Knew”, adding: “I was afraid, all the time.”


The trial, which opened in Chalon-sur-Saone in France's central Burgundy region, is due to run through Friday.

Ms Bacot was 12 when her mother's partner, Daniel Polette, who was 25 years her senior, raped her for the first time.

He was sent to prison, but after his release returned and resumed the serial rapes.

“He told my mother that he wouldn't start again. But he did,” she told the court.

At 17, Ms Bacot became pregnant, was thrown out of the house by her alcoholic mother, and went to live with Polette.

“I wanted to keep my child. I had nobody. Where could I go?,” she told the court.

Valrie Bactot - JEFF PACHOUD/AFP via Getty Images

Polette, also a heavy drinker, became increasingly violent, attacking her with a hammer at one point.

“At first he would slap me, later that became kicking, then punches and then choking,” she said, describing her life as an “extreme hell”.

Polette ordered her to work as a prostitute for truck drivers, using the back of a Peugeot people carrier, and gave her instructions through an earpiece he forced her to wear to make sure she complied with the demands of clients whom he charged between €20-50 (£17-43).

Investigators established that Polette threatened to kill her if she refused, pointing a gun at her many times.

When Polette started questioning their 14-year-old daughter Karline about her sexuality, Ms Bacot said she decided that “this has to stop”.

On March 2016, after Polette ordered his wife to undergo yet another sexual humiliation by a client, she used the pistol that he kept in the car to kill him with a single bullet to the back of the neck while he was in the driver's seat.

Ms Bacot said she wanted to make sure her daughter wouldn't suffer the same fate that she had. “I wanted to save her,” she said.

The circumstances of the shooting rule out any possible claim of legitimate self-defence.

Her lawyers said ahead of the trial that “the extreme violence that she suffered for 25 years and the fear that her daughter would be next” pushed her to kill Polette.

By Monday afternoon around 588,000 people had signed a petition demanding that Ms Bacot, who risks life in prison for murder, be cleared of the charge.